Henry Daniel

Henry Daniel was a Dominican friar and author of widely circulating medieval medical and scientific treatises. He is credited with introducing important Latin medical terms and concepts into Middle English.

Work Three of Daniel's Middle English works survive today: the Liber Uricrisiarum, a text on uroscopy; the Aaron Danielis, a herbal; and a short tract on rosemary, which was incorporated into the Aaron Danielis but also circulated independently. These Middle English texts compile and translate information from various medieval Latin medical, pharmacological, and botanical texts. Daniel's work made this information accessible to a wider readership than trained medical scholars and physicians. It survives in two significantly different manuscript copies in the British Library, MSS Additional 27329 and Arundel 42. The latter manuscript is incomplete. The text describes the nature and medicinal uses of plants, gums, metals, and fungi, and defines a number of unfamiliar medical terms. The Additional manuscript was once part of the library of the noted antiquary Dr. Cox Macro and is also mentioned by Richard Pulteney in his Historical and Biographical sketches of the progress of botany in England, from its origin to the introduction of the Linnaean system.

The short treatise on rosemary survives as a stand-alone work in over 20 manuscripts, as well as being inserted into the rosemary entry of the Aaron Danielis.

Life Daniel never received formal medical training. Because of his familiarity with academic medical texts in Latin and his knowledge of such works as Aristotle's Metaphysics, it is likely that he received at least some university education. By the time he wrote his Liber Uricrisiarum and Aaron Danielis he was an aging friar at a Dominican convent.

Editions

E. Ruth Harvey, M. Teresa Tavormina and Sarah Star. Liber Urucrisiarum: A Reading Edition. University of Toronto Press, 2020. (online)